I like to keep some things to myself
by harmless sociopath
Summary: He can tell the things she's done and the places she's been from the marks on her skin, but there are some things that she had rather not shared with him.


**You should know upfront that this story starts of in a kind of unconventional way: as reader you won't know what happened before they got to this point, and perhaps it doesn't really make any sense at the beginning, but it will make more sense when the story progresses. I've tried to make Sherlock as asexual as possible, which I found kind of hard to do since the story still deals with sex.**

**Warning: vaguely deals with idea of domestic abuse.**

"Chicken pox," he says, and his fingers follow the path of his eyes, covering the small scar on her bare shoulder, and he smirks at the emerging goose bumps on her skin, "when you were, what? Eight?"

"Nine," Irene replies and puts a hand on his chest, pushing him backwards. When his calves hit the bed his legs give in and he tumbles over, his back hitting the mattress. He sits up quickly, his feet somehow still resting on the floor. She's towering over him, her boobs almost in his face, the situation pretty much mirroring the one when they first met.

He's still fully clothed, and she is anything but. That's where the parallels end. They're in her bedroom instead of anything resembling a living room, and they're not in London anymore. They're in a city somewhere on the globe, it could be Toronto, it could be Geneva, or Sydney - it doesn't matter, not today.

He leans back slightly, squinting his eyes when they come to rest on her collar bone.

"Mister Holmes," she says, tilting her head a little and pouting her lips, "are you trying to deduce me?"

"Your shoulder. Dislocated. At least once," he says, paying no attention whatsoever to her remark. His eyes seem focused and absent-minded at the same time. She's intrigued by his actions, possibly even more than he is.

"Yes, but how?" she asks. She's teasing him now, teasing his intellect. It probably gets him more worked up than teasing him with any other sexual innuendos.

He doesn't reply to this remark either. He remains completely silent instead, his gaze skimming over her body, looking for clues where he hadn't been able to find any on previous occasions. She's let down any disguises or masks for once, and now she can almost hear the gears in his head turning on full speed.

"Horse Riding." he says suddenly, knowing he is right, "you must've enjoyed that when you were young," and he looks up at her as to say _"boring."_

"Never could resist a riding crop," she says with a wicked glint in her eyes, her delicate fingers tugging at the lapels of his purple shirt. The first button is undone, but she knows his shirt won't come off completely, not today.

To him, she's pure science, the chemicals in her body being his field of expertise.

She's his little experiment, and she wouldn't want it any other way, because it's new and it's exciting, playing with him while his brain is making a detailed map of her body.

Where other people would feel uncomfortable under his gaze, she thinks it's a rather refreshing feeling. It's a new experience, having someone who doesn't want her for anything sexually, but who finds satisfaction in examining her body, instead of being dominated by it, or having fantasies of ravishing it.

Sure, he's experimented with observing other naked bodies before, but she's pretty sure she's his first experiment in this category that still has a heartbeat. A rather rapid one, she imagines.

"Anything else?" she asks, her hands finding their way into his hair, her fingers gliding through the dark curls. She loves the feeling of his hair against her skin. Neither his facial expression nor his posture changes, but the fact that he doesn't demand her to stop or pulls back his head, tells her that he likes it, too. She mentally ads it to the relatively short list labeled "_things that Mister Sherlock Holmes likes"._

He remains silent once again, his eyes skimming over her body. He finds more scars and bruises, his fingertips dancing over each one he finds, delicately as though he is playing his violin. He finds the small scar on her abdomen, the one on her elbow, and the one on her inner thigh. He touches every single one of them, even the one on her thigh. She lets him, her fingers tightening in his hair. She figures that if he wants to gather information, his findings should be elaborate.

He shares details for every individual mark, and he's correct every single time.

"I think," Irene says when he falls silent again after a while, "we're done. With deducing, that is."

She's still half-straddling him on the edge of the bed, but he squints and shakes his head.

"No we're not," he says.

"We're not?" she asks, unable to hold back the surprise in her voice.

"The back of your head," he says, "don't think I haven't noticed, I notice everything."

She suddenly feels the one who is being controlled in this situation, not the one controlling. She feels as though someone has slapped her in the face, or worse even, being held underwater. She silently pleads for him not to start this, not to open old wounds, but begging him would make her feel extremely weak. She isn't in a life threatening position this time, and she really can't let him show how much it hurts. She will teach him never to start about this again.

She does not expect his word vomit, but once he starts talking, she has trouble keeping up with him even though she already knows what his analysis will be.

"There's a scar right on the back of your head. It's your biggest scar," he starts "scar tissue is rather light, stitched – not glued, approximately two inches, or five centimeters. You got it when you were still growing, and I believe I'm not far off when I say you were fourteen years old when you got it. You're trying to hide it underneath that haircut. Some people would think it's simply an aesthetic strategy, a scar isn't a very attractive feature after all, but they're wrong. The way you're standing there while I'm talking about it tells me there's something more to it than that. You're ashamed of it. If I'm not mistaken, and I'm not, I'm one of the first people to find about it."

"What else?" she says, shifting on her feet as though she wants to leave, but she won't. She's there now, she might as well tell him her history without saying a word.

He continues, "what is remarkable though, I'm more used to seeing this type of scars on bodies on a slab. Bodies that show wounds like that belong to people who have usually fallen down a staircase. In eighty four percent of the cases, it's not an accident. In seventy five percent of those cases it was a family member who pushed them, not a stranger. Not very uncommon, I'm afraid, fatal domestic violence. Except in your case, it wasn't fatal."

She swallows, but she manages to put a fake smile on her face, "I guess I was lucky, then. Spent quite some time being unconscious though, not something I'd like to repeat."

"Says the woman who used to spend her time having fun while others were semi-unconscious," he retorts, not showing any compassion, he doesn't even bother faking it, "your father wasn't a very nice man, was he?"

"He made me into who I am," she says sternly, pulling back her hands from his hair, desperately wanting this conversation to be over.

"You're a dominatrix," he snorts, "perhaps it's no longer your profession, but you're still one at heart. You, of all people, with a history like that? People would think you have quite the Electra complex."

Her hand collides with his face so hard that she thinks she might break his jaw. He winces, raising his hand to his face, slightly disorientated for a moment. She grabs his chin in her hand before he has time to recover, her fingernails digging into his skin. She pulls his face closer to hers, lowering her own head so their faces are only a couple of inches apart.

"Not another word, Mister Holmes. Not. Another. Word," she hisses, breathing into his face.

"What are you going to do?" he says with difficulty, "are you planning on drugging me again?"

"Have you heard what I just said?" she says, her voice is bitter and raw, and her nails are digging deeper into his skin, making it impossible for Sherlock to say anything at all. She knows it has to hurt, but Sherlock is doing his damndest best not to let it show, and she knows that he soon will start bleeding if she doesn't let go of him.

He's making indistinguishable noises, and she knows that he's giving in, just a couple of seconds more. She leans in and brushes her lips against his forehead before she finally lets go of his face.

"Good boy," she murmurs contently. She doesn't back away completely, instead she changes her position. Where she was mostly standing on her legs before, she's now straddling his waist completely, letting him know that he, in no way, is in control of her and her emotions.

He leans back, resting on his elbows, the look on his face being annoyed and pained .When he moves his jaw, she can see the dents of her nails getting white before turning into a shade of red and purple. She smiles smugly, he certainly won't forget about that anytime soon.

"Hmm, let me see," she says, leaning in closely once more and pretending to examine his face, "I can tell that someone, a _woman_, was very cross with you, because you correctly deduced one of her deeper secrets, and she really does want you to keep it a secret. Oh, no no no," she says when Sherlock opens his mouth to say something, "don't worry, that same woman probably still wants to continue the experiment, but I have to warn you, she wants to make it more _physical_."

"Don't need to be a mastermind to deduce the last point," he deadpans, hinting at their current position.

"Not a mastermind, huh? You sure know how to flatter a lady," Irene laughs, and she pushes him, his back hitting the mattress once again. Her laugh becomes a sigh when he moves his hands up her thighs.

Their situation might seem strange to others, her being naked and him being fully clothed, but neither of them cares, because it's how it works. It's how _they_ work.

She knows that he's only interested in the effect of his touches on her body and the ways in which she moves.

The way she pushes closer when his hands move up her hips. The way she bends over to kiss him, because that's what she wants. The way she moans into his mouth when he cups her arse and presses her closer. The way his fingers start to move over her, then inside of her. The way things get more frantic, because that's what she likes. The way in which she angles her body to give him better access. The way she's still bent over him, clutching his shoulders. The way the noises coming from her mouth start at low volume but start to reach a crescendo as she gets closer and closer to her climax. The way she closes her eyes and the way her body stills when she comes.

She knows he finds the way her muscles clench around his fingers especially interesting, he can actually feel the waves of her orgasm. It makes them both feel alive somehow. Alive and very human.

He's slightly annoyed by the way she slumps against his fully clothed chest after she has come down from her high, but he enjoys the way his own fingers taste after he brings them to his mouth.

He memorizes everything.

He's her detective, investigating her movements.

He's the scientist, examining her chemical reactions.

_She's his experiment, as he is hers._


End file.
